


On the Road

by orphan_account



Category: Angel: the Series, Supernatural
Genre: Apocalypse, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-07
Updated: 2008-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-03 17:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica and Illyria join forces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Road

**Author's Note:**

> For Cofax.

When the gates of hell crashed open to admit a city entire, Jessica thought she'd failed after all. It was difficult, being dead. She had tried her damndest to bear some useful message from beyond the fires. She had managed to manifest once, but not long enough to say anything. And besides, as far as she could tell, the dead only spoke in code. Maybe she just needed more practice.

For a while, she had lingered in the Impala's presence. It was difficult--it wasn't where she had died, and on top of it all it was Sam's brother's car, not Sam's, so the emotional connection was far weaker. But after a while she figured out how to keep the car's engine purring, how to coax a little more mileage out of each gallon; she hadn't been a mechanical engineering major for nothing.

Then the car crashed, and she was driven back into hell. It was a lonely corner of hell, full of metal fragments and misshapen gears and the hulking wrecks of cars and trucks and trains. Determined to do something, she had set about building herself a Frankenstein car to carry her out of here. She had some faint, cocksure intimation that symbols had power, that things that happened in this world beyond the world were nevertheless real.

Jessica had just about finished putting all the connections in the engine together when the gates opened--you could hear the echoes even from here--and the city fell. Hands shaking, she had started up the car and headed toward the lights in the distance.

She passed lakes that stank of sulphur, and curtains of hair and bone, and the wind in her ears howled equations that would never balance. There were demons, dark slinking shapes that battered against the windows. Jessica might have died a victim, but she wasn't going to stay one. From watching Sam and his brother she had learned a few things about protective charms. Although the demons made it hard for her to see where she was going, they never got in, either. What she didn't expect was a hitchhiker, a strange armored woman with blue-tinted hair and blue blue eyes and a sword in her hand.

Jessica would have floored the accelerator, but as she went past, the woman sliced through several of the demons. They dissipated in roaring smoke. The woman made an imperious gesture: Stop. Jessica turned the car around and braked hard. Maybe she was making the biggest mistake of her unlife, but on the other hand? She could use an ally. And maybe the woman knew what had happened in the outside world.

The demons had fled the woman's sword. Jessica looked around, then rolled down the window.

The woman said, "I am Illyria. I have come for the burnt women; you are one of them?"

"How did you know?" Jessica said.

"Shadows of power reside in me even here," Illyria said. "There is little time. We must free Los Angeles from the chains of hell."

"You might be one of them," Jessica said, ready to hit the accelerator again if Illyria did anything threatening.

That blue gaze held something between weariness and contempt. "I was greater than any of these yellow-eyed fools," Illryia said. "Mountains ground out their jewels for me to tread upon; oceans turned themselves into wine for my pleasure. But the universe has changed, and so must I."

"So whose side are you on?" Jessica said.

"I know what it is," Illyria said, "to kill the things that obstruct my path, the way the demon killed you and your ilk. I killed the shell I live in now. I stand with humanity now. Call it my penance, if it pleases you."

Jessica remembered the last agonizing moments pinned to the ceiling, the blood and fire and the hot wind blowing. "Get in," she said, rolling up the window. If Illyria could kill more demons, she wasn't someone whose help Jessica could afford to turn down. "I have friends to save, and I have a feeling whatever happened to L.A. will attract their attention."

Illyria sheathed her sword and took shotgun. "Are they experienced at fighting demons?"

"Honey," Jessica said as they roared down the road, "you have no idea."


End file.
